Club Suggestions Thread

Haven’t bought food/drink at the ground for years. The quality first, the queues second and finally the prices are enough to firmly put me off. I can survive from 2.30 until after 6.00 pm without an alcoholic drink and food, I take a flask of decent coffee with me.

 

It is at Stafford Rangers, from its own separate coffee outlet. They also have 4 or 5 bars available at matches, with at least three of those selling real ale. And a range of food that would put City to shame.

If a Northern Premier League club can manage it, then surely its not too difficult for City. I just get the impression that City are happy to make a profit out of those who don't care about the quality of their food and drink, whilst they ignore the rest.

 

Can't remember the exact prices, but £2 or so for a large espresso.

 

From a ‘business forum’, discussing the profit margins:- “Cost: 8p (coffee) + 6p (milk) = 14p

Sell for £2.20. Take off the VAT first resulting in the NET sale of £1.83.

Gross profit = £1.83 - £0.14 => £1.69 => 92.3% profit margin’.

 

That was one of the reasons why the club chose to outsource the food contract to what is now Sodexho all those years ago. The contractor has lots of other sporting and non-sporting outlets throughout the week to sell those pies which aren't sold at VP on the 23 days or so it's open. If City had decided to run the food kiosks themselves, many of those pies, burgers and sausage rolls which were unsold would be wasted.

The other reasons were indeed the guaranteed fee paid by the contractor and the absence of any staffing issues making the venture virtually risk free from the club's perspective. Baldwin's strategy was to leave it all to the specialists.

 

The item was looking at a unit operating over 12 hours with attendant costs of wages to cover the extended opening time. Agree with your comment. However the volume of sales over a three hour period will potentially be substantial and as such fuel the profits.

 

That would make sense ... so long as somebody at the club could come up with a way of making it work in-house. As yet, as far as I'm aware, that hasn't happened. When the club last reviewed its outsourced operations, the decided to bring the shop back in-house because they believed they could make more money from it and yet decided to leave kiosk catering outsourced. We can only assume that they looked into it thoroughly in coming to those decisions.

Some times, you just have to leave things to other experts. The club is an expert in running a football club (well, sort of!) and others are more expert at running catering operations. That's simply a reality of life.